bit-tech Hardware Awards for 2008

These limitations prevented us from making Intel’s Atom processor our innovation of the year and instead that title fell to the chip behind the hugely successful Radeon HD 4800 series. RV770 is, quite frankly, the best thing that has happened to the graphics industry since Nvidia launched G80 and what made it all the more impressive was the fact it was developed while AMD was getting its ass handed to it by G80.

RV770 represented an incredibly brave move for AMD because it went against what the graphics industry stood for. For years, ATI and Nvidia had cracked heads in a battle for superiority that traditionally focused on nothing but brute force – build a bigger GPU than your rival and you’re guaranteed to win. That wasn’t the case with RV770 and many got the impression that AMD was giving up on the high end.